AI-RAN: Software-Defined Programmable Platform (Brief)

Mobile operators are entering a period where the old capacity playbook is becoming harder to fund. Traffic continues to grow, uplink demand is becoming more important, densification remains slow and expensive, and AI-driven workloads will require tighter coordination between compute and connectivity. Additionally, the compute ecosystem is moving at a radically different cadence: AI models improve in weeks, GPU platforms advance in roughly two-year cycles, and enterprise demand for low-latency inference is beginning to collide with the network’s historic role as a connectivity layer. The strategic question is no longer whether AI will influence the RAN, but where, when, and under what economic conditions operators should begin converging compute and connectivity.